can we finally get rid of floppy drive? making a windows install flash drive

raverx3m · 09-10-2009, 08:47 PM

my new motherboard came capable of booting up from a USB flash drive/cdrom/HDD etc...

my last one apparently also had it but it was kinda half ***** still so i left the floppy there.

so does the flash drive finally replacing floppy disk drive as far as features and being acessible and bootable in bios and dos?

i got a gigabyte GA-EP43-UD3L motherboard and treres an option in the boot menu for flashdrive.

i had to use the floppy to recover from my system not booting up into windows in the past and dont want to get stuck without any access to the system if something happends.

and also i made a customized image of my windows disk with latest graphic drivers and all the rest of them using NLITE.

but could not figure out how to make a bootable flashdrive.
i just extracted the image to flash drive and it wouldnt boot.

i went around google for a lil bit and found few different methods of doing it.

can anyoen suggest which method os the easiest and most reliable out of them?

Slaymate · 09-10-2009, 08:54 PM

My mobo doesn't even have a connector for a floppy disk drive. I use a flash drive to flash my bios, but I have a usb floppy drive if I happen to need one.

Mak213 · 09-10-2009, 09:01 PM

Floppies are dead. They are so dead now it isnt funny. Very few people even have them anymore.

As for installing Windows via a flash drive, a quick search on any search engine will give you many hits.

Install XP From A Flash Drive
Install Windows XP using USB Flash Disk/ Flash Drive - Step by Step Guide

That is just the top 2 results. There are 8.9 million results. So yeah i think it can be done.

Trotter · 09-10-2009, 09:46 PM

I installed the Win7 RC from a flash drive as my optical was on the fritz at the time. It's rather easy to do, actually.

raverx3m · 09-11-2009, 11:35 AM

fkn new technology..
so i spent al day yesterday reading and getting my xp image setup with nlite and all.

spent over an hour making the "botable flash drive" with one of the walkthroughs.
and after all that it doesnt even get to setup screen. its missing/corrupted/ misplaced/ on vacation files..
so i just said faq it and do it the old way from a regular cd and then spend another day installing all the updates and drivers...

Fairuza · 09-12-2009, 06:23 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mak213

Floppies are dead. They are so dead now it isnt funny. Very few people even have them anymore.

I have one. I'm not even sure how to connect it to my motherboard (it was always present in older systems I built).

Guess I can rip it out and use it as a paperweight? Can't even think of a use for it.

Mak213 · 09-12-2009, 09:00 AM

I have one as well. I also have a 5¼ inch floppy drive as well. the first type of floppy drive. I also have a ZIP drive that is sitting around. I collect them. Just kinda a thing a do.

But really they can be pulled and hung as a decoration. Barely anything can be put on their disk since they are only 1.44MB in size. Really now a days, what file is that small? Heck even some MP3's aren't that small.

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